Why I won’t be showing my youth group ‘The Passion of The Christ’ this Easter

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This morning I accidently flicked toothpaste into my eye. It was stupidly painful and more than a little humiliating. That, however, was not the reason for the toothbrush or the toothpaste – I wanted to clean my teeth! The 2004 Mel Gibson film, The Passion of The Christ – in some odd way – is much like my unfortunate brush with the toothpaste. A significant emphasis on pain and humiliation that largely loses the reason behind the story.

I first watched The Passion of The Christ alone in my brother’s room when I was seventeen. I had a pretty mature Christian faith, and I was plugged into a good youth group. The initial post-movie shock lasted me about three hours. I remember guilt, fear, gratitude, and floods of tears. After that it took over my mental processing for weeks. There were just aspects of it that I couldn’t work out or square away.

On the whole, I believed it was generally a more helpful than unhelpful experience at the time. And that’s the thing – I wouldn’t say that The Passion of The Christ is a bad film, or even – on the whole – unhelpful for a lot of Christians. There are some very precious parts of the film that were handled with real grace and care. The question today, however, is whether we should show it at our youth clubs to groups of 11–18-year-olds? And linked to that question – does it honestly display what really happened to Jesus in those last days of His life?

A youth club staple?

I’m part of an online forum of youth workers who addressed this very question just last week: Should you show The Passion of The Christ at youth clubs? The debate drew very strong opinions from both sides. One person said the film was ‘manipulative and traumatizing’, to which someone else responded ‘you should try the source material sometime.’ Ouch! A parent raised concerns too, saying ‘absolutely not… I have a daughter that would be traumatized.’

Although this was just last week, it is an old debate. The argument usually goes back and forth between, yes show it, it’s important to see with accuracy the pain that Jesus went through; and no, don’t show it, it’s too violent, and it’s inappropriate for young people.

I have sympathy for both of these views. I think it is important to know how much tragic pain, violence, and humiliation the cross inflicted on Jesus, and for young people to be able fit that into their faith language. However, that should be done with 1) accuracy, 2) necessity, and 3) sensitivity as measures. Unfortunately, I think these are all found wanting in The Passion of The Christ.

Accuracy

The Passion of The Christ promotes a myth of accuracy though claiming loyalty to the Bible as its source material and historical meticulousness. There are, however, plenty of accuracy issues in The Passion of The Christ, from the clothes and beards to the languages and customs, to the off-kilter presentation of both the Jews and the Romans, to the reoccurring (and frankly creepy) anthropomorphised images of the devil. Sorry, I’ve got a soft spot for Christian mysticism, but 40 year old baby-Satan was just weird!

There are just far too many details that are inaccurate to take the film as solid history. However, it’s not just a case of ‘if you can’t get the small things right…’ There are also a few much more significant problems. For this post, I’ll focus on just one – and it’s a big one!

The film’s particular and extended image of ‘scourging’ – repeated lashes with something akin to a cat-o-nine tails embedded with pieces of bone or metal – does not come from either the Bible or historical authorities. As archaeologists Berlin and Magness comment ‘there are neither descriptions, pictorial representations, nor physical evidence for the brutal implement that is used at length and to such horrific effect in The Passion’s “scourging” scenes.’[1] In fact, the only implement the Gospels’ mention is a ‘reed’ (Matt. 27:30; Mk. 15:19), and the only example of a weapon anything like what’s displayed in the film is ‘the whip’ used by Jesus to drive people out of the temple (a ‘φραγέλλιον’ in Jn. 2:13 ). This, however, was a collection of leather chords, not a metal-encrusted torture device.

Although the image of a torture weapon with multiple chords and chains and with bone or metal hooks is widely shared in Bible studies and on the internet, in reality there is very little evidence of the Romans using anything like this in the time of Jesus. The closest thing we have from archaeology is a ceremonial instrument carried by pagan priests (which wasn’t used for torture) or a 4th Century ‘plumbate’ whip, which wasn’t around in 1st Century Palestine. It wasn’t really until the 15th or 16th Century that the Church began to speculate on this kind of torture weapon. Our understanding of the ‘cat-o-nine-tails’ scourge is, in reality, an invention of medieval art, not Roman antiquity.

In the film, however, Jesus is lashed, flogged, and scourged across several positions, with several embellished tools, around one-hundred times. If the film is correct, and Jesus was tortured in such an unprecedented and remarkable way – and one that diverges so much from Roman custom – you would have thought that one of the Gospels would have mentioned it?

Going back to the youth workers’ forum I mentioned earlier, one person said, ‘If anything [the film] doesn’t show half of what suffering our savior went through!’ and another, ‘[The] Passion of the Christ doesn’t hold a candle to what actually happened but is the closest thing to it.’ Sorry guys, I appreciate your passion, but if you’re using either the Bible or historical record, then the scourging scene was overdone, exaggerated, and largely fabricated.

This isn’t to make light of Jesus’ flogging. By no means! But it is a matter of focus. Whereas the Gospels focus on the teaching and person of Christ without overly concentrating on his physical pain, The Passion of The Christ completely reverses this emphasis. It dials up the torture to a degree that is indefensible from either historical or biblical evidence – and loses the purpose or person of Jesus behind it. There is accuracy in some of the drama presented, but much of it is heavily embellished.

Necessity

My second issue is contextual balance. Theologically, the film places so much emphasis on the physical, human-flesh suffering, that it loses the eternal battle for souls almost entirely. It’s mostly important that we know that Jesus died for us, and then it’s definitely meaningful to remember that that was an intense and unfair death. But the pain experienced is not the point! When we super-over-hyper focus on any single aspect of the gospel to this extent, we throw the perfect balance of the story out of whack, and we lose the narrative power of the whole.

If you put rocket fuel in Ford Mondeo, you’re not left with a faster, cooler car. What you actually have is a very messy explosion! Even if The Passion of The Christ was mostly an accurate depiction, the severe overemphasis on Jesus’ torture and death without any explanation or context loses the wider story of His incarnation, crucifixion, atonement, resurrection and ascension.

The most glaring issue throughout the two-hour violent depiction of Jesus’ torture and death then, is that at no point does the film address the question why? For what reason did Jesus die? If you’re going to use The Passion of The Christ as an evangelistic tool, then that’s a really significant hole. And considering the intensive emotional state that your young people are going to be in after watching it, are you going to be able to then explain what’s missing? You might get a positive-looking immediate result (“they were speechless!”), but you also might be unpicking it for years to come.

Put another way, if you’re going to justify over-emphasising  gratuitous violence for theological reasons, you’d better make sure your theology is on point. This is especially true if you’re working with vulnerable young people.

Sensitivity

Entertainment Weekly ranked The Passion of The Christ as ‘the most controversial film of all time.’ I’ve heard Christians say this is because the gospel is offensive and divisive, but that’s not the reason the magazine gave. It was ranked this highly because of its extreme depictions of torture and violence. For context, they ranked this ahead of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, a film for which the phrase ‘ultra-violent’ was invented.

The question that comes to focus here then is why do you want to show it to your young people in the first place? Because of the extreme violence and gore, it’s an 18-Rated (R in America) film that has been deemed unsuitable for younger audiences. This means you would need a very good reason to show it to them. If that reason isn’t accuracy or necessity, then what do you have left? My fear is that it stylises Jesus in such a way that invokes a response – and if we were really honest, that’s why we show it.

Even in a teenage world of ‘Call of Duty’, ‘The Hunger Games’, and ‘Game of Thrones’ our responsibility to safeguard the development of our children should not be dialled down. Even if they are exposed to violence in the media, it is not an excuse for us to jump on the same bandwagon and attempt to disciple them pastorally by exaggerating the violence of our own tradition. While a wide range of gruesome violence exists in the Bible, taking in a movie laden with visual effects and featuring real actors is an entirely different experience.

Coming back to the true cross

We must teach Jesus and we must teach the cross. There is nothing more essential for us to do! But let’s begin and end with the real Jesus and draw them to the cross of the Bible. It’s there where true power is found, and a lifetime of passion is fuelled.

The cross was a violent, gruesome, humiliating, and unfair treatment of our saviour. It was an incredible amount of suffering! However, we do not need to embellish the details, bypass the facts, ignore the theology, or neglect context to tell this story. It’s important that we share the fullness of who Jesus truly is.

Good youth work doesn’t rely on easy wins. Rather than depending on these intensive (and insensitive) ‘jumpstart’ moments, let’s instead do the real work of building relationships with young people that will draw them close to Jesus with integrity, love, and longevity – rather than guilt, fear, and confusion.

It’s not a terrible film, and some of it I really value, but I won’t be showing it to my teenagers this Easter.

 

[1] A. Berlin & J. Magness (2004), Two Archaeologists Comment on The Passion of the Christ. The Archaeological Institute of America. Available at: https://www.archaeological.org/pdfs/papers/Comments_on_The_Passion.pdf

 

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Advocating for Women in Youth Ministry – we really must do better!

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A couple of years ago I received a bit of pushback to my 11 essential youth ministry books because none of them were written by women.

My response was that this, unfortunately, is the reality of the market. For every youth work book written by a woman there are dozens written by men. There is an enormous problem with the body language of youth ministry towards women.

Women and Youth Ministry

I’m always nervous writing on topics like this because I don’t want to come across as a yet another entitled, white, middle-class man, swooping in like a hero-ninja-knight trying to rescue women. Women don’t need rescuing by men who think they’ve got all the answers. But it’s time that the wisdom, experience and voice of women is promoted, listened to, valued and learned from. And this will mean that men like me must be willing to advocate for women.

Women have been immensely mistreated across leadership in the Church, and – even though there have always been more female youth ministers than female ministers generally – they are still seen as second-rate workers for the Gospel.

This is just wrong.

A few years back I collected stories from 40 women in youth ministry. These were shocking to the core. They included lines like:

“For about a year, I had people tell me I needed to hurry up and find a man because, being a woman, I couldn’t relate to boys. Two years later, they told me to be more ladylike so I could relate to the girls, because I’m only good at relating to the boys (I’ve always been a tomboy). Also, there are some concerns that me wearing men’s clothing may make my girls lesbian?”

and

“Do you know how many job descriptions have the words he/him/his? And then I have gotten responses back with one question: “Are you a man?” I have two degrees in student ministry and have volunteered for nearly 15 years in various capacities but rarely get any response.”

also

“I am the children’s minister at our church, note I am paid staff. I was told last week I wasn’t allowed to go on the staff retreat bc I was a woman…. my husband could go and “represent” me.”

This doesn’t just come from the culture of youth work, but from the Church as a whole, and even from churches hiring women as youth workers. Although there is a growing openness, there still seems to be a generational plague of views that see a woman in ministry as somehow less than a man.

I know that I’m less traditional on women in church leadership than many of my evangelical brothers and sisters. I believe that women in leadership is supported by the Bible and should be practiced in the Church today. This is not that post, however, so for now I’ll just point towards an excellent exposition of this from Bishop Tom Wright.

Where would youth ministry be without women?

Some of the most amazing youth workers I’ve ever met have been women. My own teams have always had incredibly wise and able women in them – and my ministry suffers without them. My own experiences aside, however, the shape of youth ministry today owes a lot to female influence.

There are, of course some important youth ministry books written by women, including ‘God-bearing Life’ by Kenda Creasy Dean and ‘Youthwork’ by Sally Nash. There are women heading up a huge amount of the accredited youth ministry training across the UK including Alice Smith at St. Mellitus, Alia Pike at Nazarene, Mel Lacey at Oak Hill, Dr. Sally Nash at CYM, and – until very recently – Dr. Carolyn Edwards at Cliff College, and now York Diocese. The editors of Premier Youth and Children’s Work Magazine are women (Ruth Jackson, Jess Lester and previously Emily Howarth). There’s also Naomi Allen heading up Open Doors Youth, and Chioma Fanawopo leading Release Potential. About 60% of National Youth for Christ staff are women, about 70% of Youthscape’s, and almost half of Scripture Union’s.

This represents a significant amount of influence in shaping the development of future practitioners. Youth ministry would look immensely different without women’s significant influence in shaping it.

So what can we do?

Balance for balance sake is surely not the answer. We should hire and support those with a clear calling and measurable gifting without taking sex into the equation. My concern, however, is that a lot of the standards we measure gifting and calling against have been inherently masculine for quite some time. We often have this bias at play, even when it’s not explicitly stated. We might believe we’re trying to hire ‘the right person for the job, regardless’ yet still have subliminally pictured a man in the role and so measured candidates against that image.

Levelling the playing field must start, therefore, at the heart level, looking inwards at our attitudes, not just outwards at our hiring and management practices. It’s important to remove the bias from our rules and structures, but on its own, that is just not enough. We should first address our biases in our own minds and attitudes. This is where the change has to come from. There’s lots of dark areas that might need lighting up, and impertinent questions that need to be asked.

At very least, can we love our co-workers in Christ, and see them first as professionals? We are partners in the Gospel, seeking the same goals, and shooting at the same targets – together.

I’m really proud that over half of the contributors to YouthWorkHacks are women and my own book includes two amazing sidebars written by women: Dr. Sam Richards and Rachel Turner. In fact, the YouthWorkHacks audience in 2019 was 58% female. I don’t mention this to make me look balanced, but because these women have contributed massively to the message that I care so much about. They have written with grace, wisdom and power, and they have taken my work to levels it just couldn’t have gone without them.

There’s so much more to do

A few days ago, my wife and I celebrated 12 years of marriage together. Sharing life together has been an unmatched privilege and the greatest adventure of my life. I, however, am not the cutting edge of our partnership; Jesus is. Our life together has been built by mutual submission and sacrifice to one another (Eph. 5:21) – letting Jesus be the final leader of our growth together. If I was to strip Katie of any authority in our marriage, I would certainly be worse off for it. I need her, she needs me, and we both need Jesus – together.

The way the church has treated women in youth ministry (and across all ministry) is shocking. We need to do all that we can to remedy, restore, and reconcile this litany of subversive abuse. Men shouldn’t just try to be heroes, but they can be advocates. Let’s be more aware, more open, more professional, more bold, and far more humble towards (and on behalf of) our fellow co-workers in Christ.

There’s much more to say, and much has already been said by people far more qualified than I am. This is neither a last word nor a first, but to my brothers, let’s just try harder for the sake our sisters, the sake of our ministries, the sake our young people, and the sake of the Gospel. There’s a lot to put right, so let’s be advocates, so we truly can be partners.

 

Ps. Some writers to check out…

There are some truly amazing female writers, pastors, and thinkers out there. Take some time to check out:

  • Rachel Tuner
  • Sally Nash
  • Kendra Creasy-Dean
  • Rachel Gardner
  • Kate Coleman
  • Bethany Jenkins
  • Melissa Kruger
  • Trillia Newbell
  • Katherine Sondergger
  • Amy Orr-Ewing
  • Kristen Deede Johnson
  • Bethany Hanke Hoang
  • Elaine Padilla
  • Kara Powell
  • Frances Young
  • Gloria Furman
  • Nancy Guthrie
  • Kathleen Nielson
  • Jen Wilkin

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Have you ‘google tested’ your youth ministry?

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A few months back I was invited to speak on pioneering youth work projects in a small city. Before I got there, I did what I call ‘the switched on parent test’. I googled a bunch of words and phrases a parent might do when moving to a new area to find stuff on for their kids.

In this particular city, the best any church or faith based project did in response to my search terms was page six of google’s results.

Now that google uses far more accurate location-driven alorithms, we’re not fighting the global web of information quite as hard. With this in mind, search engine optimisation (or SEO) is no longer a mind-boggling pit of despair! Just having clear, consistent information on websites and social media is enough for your work to show up in local searches.

So does it?

I challenge you – right this minute – to ‘google test’ your project. Don’t google the name or building of your project; instead do some cold searches that a parent might do when moving to your area.

So, for instance – using say, Blackpool, as the example – try (with your own town) each version of:

  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] clubs in Blackpool
  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] work in Blackpool
  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] projects in Blackpool
  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] organisations in Blackpool
  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] hang outs in Blackpool
  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] sports clubs in Blackpool
  • Things to do for [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] in Blackpool
  • Where can I send my [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] in Blackpool

etc.

Does your church or youth project feature on the first two search results pages? If not, it’s time to make some changes! Here’s just few things you can do:

Make sure you have web presence. This might mean a website or blog, but almost certainly (for parents) it means a Facebook page or group. Make sure that all your sites and accounts point back to each other.

Utilise other web presence. Submit your information to the council, school online bulletins, local ‘what’s on’ social media groups, and of course church websites.

Update regularly, or at least consistently. Google knows how to pick up on sites that don’t have activity, and they shift them down the rankings. Make sure you are adding regular updates; ideally weekly. At very least, try and do updates at the same time each time (eg. lunchtime on a Friday every fortnight).

Share, share, share! Have your friends, followers, and team regularly share your updates, or tag you in on their own. Keep conversations moving, and always respond to comments (even if it’s just ‘thank you’).

Stay safe. Make sure you’re aware of best safeguarding practices around young people online, and have the correct permissions to share photos/videos of young people.

Keep your eye out. The google test can also find places where people are already talking about you, but you didn’t know. Maybe there are complaints, questions, or reviews on forums or sharing sites. I once discovered we had a tripadvisor site this way! Engage with these spaces, and point them back to yours.

Caveat – it’s not the only way!

Of course google isn’t the only way to tell parents about what you’ve got going on, and none of this really speaks to telling the young people themselves. However, why not make the best of every opportunity?

A switched on parent who is moving to a new area – or have kids about to start secondary school – are going to be searching for ways to connect their children with organisations and groups. Let’s at least be part of the menu they’re selecting from!

 

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The Harry Potter debate – a readers digest version

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Back in April I wrote ‘The best arguments against reading Harry Potter, with some critical responses – a faux debate.’ It was over three and a half thousand words long with twenty-two headings, and thirteen discussed Bible verses. It was long!

It seems to me, therefore, that a ‘readers digest’ version might be called for – which is this post. Please, however, don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is the whole story. If you want the nitty gritty rather than the pretty pithy, then click here and dig deeper.

So here are the simplified best arguments not to read Harry Potter, with my slightly longer, but still abridged responses.

Reasons not to read Harry Potter

Reason 1

It glorifies witchcraft which the Bible forbids (Deut. 18).

Reason 2

It’s too dark and passively promotes paganism.

Reason 3

It was researched using real rituals and references real spells.

Reason 4

There is no under-girding biblical worldview (which exists in other fantasy stories such as the Chronicles of Narnia).

Reason 5

It doesn’t add anything to our faith journeys – and it won’t be in Heaven.

Reason 6

A Christian’s limited reading time should be spent on more obviously helpful books.

My Responses

Response 1

This misunderstands the ‘forbidden sorcery’ specified in the Bible which is very different to what’s in Harry Potter.

By confusing the two together, we nuance what the Bible is actually forbidding and dilute its real teaching. If anything, Harry Potter condemns the same specific practices the Bible does (child sacrifice, talking to evil spirits, deceiving people out of their money through trickery etc.).

There is also no small a difference between reading about something and practicing something. If there wasn’t any distinction then we would be limiting what we consume far more widely and strictly. This would include getting rid of some Christian classics.

Response 2

The worldview of Harry Potter does not condone ritualistic worship or false religion. Even when the author borrowed from pagan rituals, they are heavily adapted, and mashed together randomly. Wiccans themselves reject Harry Potter as based on their own practices

Although there are some very dark moments in Harry Potter, they are no darker than some in Lewis’s Narnia or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. High School texts (such as Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye or Shakespeare’s Macbeth) also present dark or sinful behaviour.

There is nothing specific or particular to Harry Potter therefore. Distinguishing for this reason is randomly cracking the whip. Censorship is not the answer, careful reading with young people is.

Response 3

Rowling researched alchemy, religious history, spell-craft, medieval remedies, Shaman culture, and witch trials. This research has been fully documented and exhibited.

The Inklings (most famously Lewis, Tolkien and Williams) researched and studied the same materials that Rowling did, and they were a Christian group. This research led to the invention, for instance, of the Necromancer in Tolkien and the witch Jadis in Lewis.

The research of a topic does not equal the practice of what is researched. Assuming a subversive plot to encourage children into actual witchcraft is just not what is going on. Rowling herself quoted in a CNN interview:

‘I absolutely did not start writing these books to encourage any child into witchcraft. I’m laughing slightly because to me, the idea is absurd.’

Response 4

(Spoilers)
Rowling calls herself a practicing Christian and attends church. The explicit amount of Christian theology throughout the series shows evidence of real Gospel knowledge.

Love in Harry Potter is presented as the most powerful force in the universe which was ultimately shown in self-sacrifice: First, Harry’s mum sacrifices herself for the sake of her son, and then eventually, Harry sacrifices himself for the good of the whole world. His sacrificial death also ends in resurrection which provides a powerful protection of love over all he had died for. This is, quite simply, the clearest fictional presentation of the Gospel in metaphoric form that I have ever read.

Morally, there is no underage sex, nor are there unhealthy relationships with narcotics or alcohol. Even lying is shown to have serious consequences. Harry Potter actually contains a rich tapestry of discussion topics, almost all of which are resolved in ways fully compatible with a biblical worldview.

Response 5 & 6

I have found much in the Harry Potter series that has encouraged, edified, and supported my faith. The artistic celebration of self-sacrificing love over evil, the power of resurrection, the need for a humble saviour, and the power of authentic community demonstrated in the books have often caused me to turn to worship.

The strong Christian themes, the Christian moralistic worldview, and the description Rowling gives of her own faith should lead us to assume that the simple presence of witchcraft in the Harry Potter series is not enough to reject it out of hand. Using that same measure, we would also have to reject many other fabulous books that also claim an explicit Christian basis.

Does this mean every Christian should read it? No, it doesn’t. It does, however, mean that we should evaluate how healthy we think it would be for us and our children with the same critical standards we should apply to everything else.

Want more?

Do read the full article here for a deeper discussion and a bit more meat.

Photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash

 

 

Mental Health and Youth Ministry – on the IVP Blog

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This was first published here on the IVP blog.

When I was 14, one of my best friends was Daniel. I didn’t know Daniel was clinically depressed or that his random outbursts were actually early signs of bipolar disorder. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t normal that Daniel’s room only contained a mattress, a guitar and a pile of black hoodies. All I knew was he was fun and unique to be around, and that he had an unusually broad talent for music.

We drifted apart over the years, so it came as a huge shock to me when he was found in a flat, dead at age 23, after swallowing a mix of alcohol and methadone.

Daniel was a disruption to the classroom environment. He was always in trouble and – as far as I know – had no-one working with him to identify or work with his root causes. To me though, Daniel was just a mate who I’ll never see again.

I’d like to think that I’m a passionate advocate for mental health. At least I believe that we neither spend enough or research enough to develop treatment for those who really struggle.

The NHS says that one in four adults and one in ten children will experience mental health problems, however only a small amount of the NHS budget has been historically set aside for mental health research, diagnosis or treatment. This is getting better (£11.9 billion in 2017/18), but the waiting lists are still too long, and the medical opinions between departments are still too rampantly inconsistent.

Could we, as youth workers and as Church, develop programs that genuinely support young people with poor mental health? After all, this is not something we might encounter as youth workers; we will encounter it and we should be prepared.

This is a vast landscape, and anything we can do needs focus, so let’s start with what we are not.

1. We are not doctors

As mental health is dialled up to 11 in the media, and the – much-needed – mission to re-educate the public on its seriousness is highlighted, pop-psychology has been dialled up too, and genuine illnesses are in danger of being sensationalised as almost fashionable.

Some have become reactionary to basic terms and there are thousands of websites and videos where you can be ‘self-diagnosed’. Some of these are helpful, but many are not. With the internet being the shape it is, we have no way of knowing if the guy at the other end of the keyboard is an actual MD, or a college drop-out sitting on his parents’ couch with a can of Monster and ill-fitting pyjamas.

With this as our main source of information, and without medical training, we too could fall into to the trap of cavalierly ‘diagnosing’ young people with mental health conditions. Even if we have been through clinical treatment ourselves, we shouldn’t be telling kids what they do and don’t have as if we were trained experts.

We’re not psychologists, psychiatrists, key-workers, or mental health nurses. Our job is not treatment, it’s support. We should follow medical advice, and refer young people to professionals.
We should help them get the help they need, and sometimes that help is simply not us.

2. We are not them

Empathy is a powerful tool in ministry. Being able to legitimately say, ‘yes, I’ve been in that hole and I know the way out’ can be really helpful. However, assuming we understand a young person’s mental health just because we have had a similar experience is not always the best route to take. It can easily lead to unhealthy over-dependency at one end of the spectrum, or a blank wall of rejection at the other.

Every young person struggling with mental health is different. We should let young people speak freely about their own condition, and help us to understand what they need and how they like to talk about it.

Our job is to support each young person’s individual needs as best we can, and partner up with family, key-workers, teachers, and doctors to create a consistent experience of boundaries and support.

3. We are not alone

It’s easy to get frustrated by conditions that we can’t understand, but our job isn’t to fix young people – it’s to lead them to Jesus. There are few things that do this better than creating a safe place of love and security in our ministries.

We’re not in this alone. We live in the community of faith surrounded by quality, compassionate people who – when we truly serve each other – create a unique place of acceptance and healing.

As youth ministers, it’s important that we don’t hold burdens for young people alone. We should have accountability in place where we can debrief and share with a select group of trusted people. This could be pastors, line-managers, counsellors, or a network of other practitioners.

We also have the Holy Spirit living in us; the very presence of Jesus. We are not in this alone, and we can love as He first loved us, and create safe places for struggling young people. We should begin by trusting God, supporting each other, and from that place of strength – loving young people.

 

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Responding to The Game of Thrones Debate

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Game of Thrones. Is it the gloves off, gruesome, grim and gristly opiate for the masses – or the fantastical story that grapples with the true complexities of human experience? Is it right for a Christian to watch it for entertainment, or perhaps missional research – or should they steer clear of it all-together?

Could this be a random cracking of the whip? Like Sabrina prompted last year, Deadpool three years ago, or Harry Potter ten plus years ago? It’s topics like these which become convergence points of fixation from both the heavy-grace (everything is permissible!) and heavy-law (not everything is beneficial!) extremes of the evangelical wings.

These debates create new heroes and villains, they scratch some deep itches, and they rehash the prohibition controversies from our protestant histories. They can also be quite sad.

We do love a good ‘what should we eat, drink, wear, watch, play, read, listen-to’ dispute, don’t we? I wonder if we would just get bored without them – what would we do without a pointy wedge issue on what we should consume? Paul said, ‘do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink’ (Col. 2:16), and Jesus said, ‘do not be anxious… is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?’ (Mt. 6:25). It’s almost as if they knew, go figure.

Without these debates, we might have to actually talk about Jesus more directly, which oddly makes us squirm just a little more than is entirely decent.

The gauntlet

A few weeks ago, British Youth for Christ National Director Neil O’Boyle wrote a post on relativism and our media consumption titled ‘why youth workers shouldn’t be watching Game of Thrones’ (GoT). The big take away was to respect the enormous amount of responsibility that comes when leading young people. It’s all too easy for them to take our actions as their permissions.

That’s a hard-hitting challenge that needs to be grappled with at every level of leadership. That’s the responsibility that any parent or leading adult has for the development of young people. Neil said:

‘I’m sure by now I have jarred you. I didn’t mean to. I guess all I’m asking as influencers and culture setters is: Are we inconsistent? And are our inconsistencies unhelpful to a younger person’s walk with Jesus?’

Even if we’re someone who likes to binge-watch Baywatch while chain-smoking – tell me we heard that? We want to fiercely pursue holiness and invite young people to join us on that journey, even if it means giving up something that we like. What Christian among us really wants to challenge this idea – isn’t sacrifice and humility at the very centre of our faith after all?

Cards on the table – I know Neil. I’m one of the 50-80 youth workers he mentioned in that article that benefits directly from his rich experience and considered example. Full disclosure: I think Neil is a ledge.

Sure, Neil’s article didn’t solidly settle in too many places. It was, after all, a gentle challenge on a hugely sticky topic. I’m suspicious that the title was actually an editorial addition, rather than Neil’s original? (Correct me if I’m wrong, Emily!). I think this is really unfortunate as that title colours the whole post, and it changes the way it reads – especially if you already have a strong opinion on the show.

The reaction

In response, Youth and Student Pastor, Alan Gault essentially wrote what is known in journalism as ‘a takedown piece’ in order to counter Neil’s view. It was a little blunt. If all I had got to go on was the tone of the two pieces, then I’d warm to Neil’s and recoil from Alan’s. The real issue though is that Alan’s article didn’t grapple with that central gut-hitting challenge from Neil about our inconsistency.

Instead, Alan reached around Neil, and clung to the title ‘why a Christian shouldn’t…’ Alan said, ‘I find the majority of reasons given by Neil to have their own problems and I find his blanket ban unnecessary.’ Which reasons and what ban? Other than the title, GoT is only mentioned once in Neil’s article, and just as an example of a much wider issue.

Alan battled a monstrous, legislative ‘They’, and caricatured Neil (as representing this force) as putting down a ‘blanket ban’ rather than carefully considering what he really wrote.

Relativism is a cultural phenomenon which goes far beyond simple moral subjectivity. Neil was calling us to consider our example to those we lead in the middle of such a vulnerable and uncertain culture. This wasn’t legislative, it was, however, a deliberate challenge.

I believe that Alan wrote a reaction to a strawman, rather than a response to an idea. It may have galvanised the GoT-loving side of the fence, and rattled those who abstain, but I don’t think it promoted any real dialogue outside the respective echo chambers.

As Christians we need to talk and listen to each other with generosity. Without this there’s no edification or building one another up in Christ happening at all. Before we get to the content then, let’s start with respecting that we’ll know each other in heaven, and disagreements should come with brotherly affection.

The thing behind the thing

What’s a shame about this is that I think Alan was on to something. Once you concede he wasn’t really responding to Neil, there were some real nuggets of gold in his post.

Alan was trying to make us think about grace. We can’t legislate people into the Kingdom, nor can we set strict universal boundaries over our growth – especially when triggers may be very different for different people. Alan reminded us about the wildly varied contexts that are involved in individual walks, the complexities of messy lives, and the primacy of the promptings of the Holy Spirit in the changing of those lives. He encouraged us to think upon the Jesus who hung out with the dregs of society. Fab! This too deserves to be grappled with, and I imagine Neil would heartily nod along with all of these things.

If Alan focused on these pieces and wrote that post convincingly, I think it might have added to the conversation here – and iron would have had a chance to sharpen iron. He didn’t, however, and it hasn’t.

What was the problem?

For me, the main issue is I think Alan’s post accidentally cheapened the Bible in favour of entertainment. I’m sure he’d be horrified that I thought that but let me explain.

Alan identified passages in the Bible that contain explicit and graphic sex and violence. He said we shouldn’t, therefore, use sex and violence alone as a reason not to watch similar content in GoT. Some of these passages were implied rather than graphic (Noah and his son from Gen. 9:18-27), and others were metaphoric rather than explicit (Song of Songs throughout). None of them were qualified or discussed and all of them needed to be given in context.

If I was marking Alan’s post as an undergrad theology paper (which it wasn’t), then I would push him quite hard on proof-texting. He selected a group of somewhat random passages that contain what he said was gratuitous sex and violence and then presented them together with false cohesion.

Ek. 23:20, for instance, needs to be read in light of Ek. 14-23: The storyline is the adulterous woman (Israel) and the lover (God) against adulterous lovers (other nations), the issue being idolatry and worship (23:49). Song of Solomon is a dramatic and intimate exploration of the love of God and the worship of His people. The Conquering of Canaan sits in a context of God’s promises to Moses and Abraham, against idol-worshipping pagan nations. The David and Bathsheba story needs to be approached in tension with Ps. 51 and 2 Sam. 12. All of these passages need to be read while keeping the Bible’s full perspective of heaven and redemption in mind. This is the unique worldview of the Bible lived out in the person of Jesus who we aspire to in all our choices today. This is not the general worldview of TV.

You can’t, therefore, just pluck stories out of the Bible for containing similar ideas, ignore the original contexts, group them together indiscriminately, and then present them as a whole to justify today’s consumption choices. That’s hermeneutically naughty! *Slaps wrist.*

Then there’s the logical issue with the argument.

Even if we grant the premise (the Bible is full of [unqualified] stories of gratuitous sex and violence), the conclusion doesn’t then follow.

I once had a young person use exactly this same argument including some of the very same Bible references to explain why it was ok for him to watch pornography. This is unfortunately what happens when you draw too straight a line between two very different things like the Bible and TV. Philosophers call this the fallacy of false equivalence.

For the argument to work as presented, we would need to assume that reading and viewing are the same thing and that both would affect people in the same way. We would need to assume the acts of sex and violence are treated in the same way in both the Bible and GoT and then assume that Paul’s call to purity (Eph. 5:3) along with Jesus’ call to holiness (Mt. 5:28) doesn’t directly apply to those racy and brutal Bible stories. Putting that another way, we would need to isolate those verses from the wider voice of the Bible. We would probably need to assume that there’s no real distinction between art and history as well. Mostly though, I think we would need to assume that both the Bible and GoT were made by the same type of creator with the same kind of purpose.

The issue here is not elevating GoT to the same place as the Bible, but rather depreciating the Bible to be comparable with GoT. This is the Word of God – it’s not just another piece of media. They are simply not comparable.

Sex and violence in the Bible are not enough to warrant viewing sex and violence for entertainment today.

Isn’t everything permissible?

Alan misquoted 1 Cor. 6 as saying ‘everything is permissible, but not everything is helpful.’ We can’t get at him too much, however, because almost everyone misquotes Paul here! What’s missing is the quote marks, but oh boy do they make a difference.

Paul is playing devil’s advocate by slightly sarcastically pseudo-quoting his Corinthian reader saying ‘hey, but I’m saved by grace, so I can do whatev, right? Who are you to tell me no?’

The examples Paul gives for this are cheating someone (v.7, 10), wrongdoing (9), sexual immorality and promiscuity (9, 18-20), stealing, getting drunk, and mocking (10). Because of these things church members were taking legal action against each other (1-6) and the terrible result was increasing division (vv.1-6, 7, 14-16).

On one side of the division there was a misapplication of grace and on the other a misapplication of law. Paul was directly addressing the issues on the first side in the beginning of his pseudo-quote, ‘everything is permissible’. It might just as well read, ‘Hey, I can steal, get drunk, and mock people, right? Who are you to tell me no?’

Alan said ‘is watching Game of Thrones permissible? Yes! Is it helpful? That is for you to figure out’. Is that a legitimate way of using this passage? Only as much as saying something like ‘is murder permissible? Yes! Is it helpful?’ A murderer isn’t barred from the Kingdom of God, but that doesn’t mean crack on.

Using a devil’s advocate quote of Paul as a propositional way for us to measure our consumption choices is altogether the opposite of what Paul was trying to do.

Yes, it’s about grace, but it’s about holiness too. The word ‘helpful’ here (συμφέρει) is exactly the same word used by Jesus in Matt. 5:29 when he tells us that it’s better (more helpful) to pluck out our eyes and cut off our hands if they could possibly cause us to sin. Thinking about Neil’s original post, it’s also the same word used in Matt. 18:6, when Jesus said it would be better (more helpful) for us to be drowned than cause a ‘little one’ to sin.

And there’s the point. What standard do we set for holiness, and what things will we sacrifice for it? Is it permissible? Sure – in the broadest possible way in that it won’t block the gate to heaven. But does it ultimately bring glory to God, unity to His church, and provide a consistent standard to His children? Do our actions – including what we watch on TV – bring the waveforms of our hearts more in line with God’s, or do they clash? Do our habits resonate with or detract from the strength and clarity of our full-throated pursuit of worship? This is the truer reading of 1 Cor. 6.

So…. can a Christian watch GoT?

I wouldn’t and I don’t. I know my issues and my temptations and by spending two minutes on IMDB Parent’s Guide I decided that it wouldn’t be good for me. I love fantastical fiction, but I decided to take a pass on this. My wife, however, is a whole other person and – although she doesn’t watch it either – her own set of triggers and values would be different to mine and these would inform her differently too. I don’t want to be overly prescriptive, therefore, although I would take some convincing that watching GoT would be actively helpful for a Christian’s walk with God. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone legally too young to watch it, which would be most of my young people.

I don’t imagine it’s an easy watch for a Christian, or a helpful watch for pursuing purity, although I concede it’s probably entertaining and interesting. I think it’s always worth asking the question: can I worship God with this? I think, in fact, that there are a few much better questions to ask than ‘should you’? (You can read an old article of mine on ChurchLeaders about this here), and we could converse together over this and other topics much better than we do.

As British Telecom famously said: It’s good to talk.

 

Photo by mauRÍCIO santos on Unsplash

So you’re a bold speaking warrior for truth eh?

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Tribalism is synonymous with Western Church culture. Since the early schisms, through to the modern-day denominations and networks, believers ‘of every stripe’ rally to Paul, Peter, or Apollos (1 Cor. 1:12).

I remember being a teenager, sat with my vicar in his house trying to convince him to write a reference for me to go to an American seminary. He eventually did, but not until he treated me to a detailed list of all the peripheral things that he didn’t like about the seminary – and American churches in general. None of his problems were linked to Jesus, the nature of God, or to the Gospel, but he talked like I was walking blindly into a den of vipers.

At Youth for Christ in North Wales, we make a real effort to walk with any church who will walk with us. Our contentions are that they must love Jesus and must love young people. If there is something that has a significant impact upon the Gospel, then we’ll graciously go our separate ways. There is an enormous plethora of church styles in North Wales, and many small disagreements – but they’re still filled with good people seeking Jesus.

Finding identity in who we’re against

I recently heard a joke about an industrious Christian stranded on a desert island. He built a hospital, a school, a post-office, and two churches. When rescuers found him, they asked about the two churches and he answered very seriously, pointing, “that’s the church I go to, and that’s the church I don’t go to.”

It’s almost like we cannot be who we are without finding that in the relief of who we’re not.

If we spent one tenth of the time talking about Jesus than we do about our niggling differences, then I bet we could kiss evangelistic training goodbye!

At some point we made the theology yardstick as narrow as the narrow gates of salvation (Matt. 7:13-14) – as if we somehow could work out someone else’s salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). Somewhere we decided that judgment, protection, righteous anger, and conviction should all be whacked together, indiscriminately, to mean an aggressive micro-management of doctrine. I simply cannot get over the mean-spirited Christian meme culture surrounding this.

I totally believe in Gospel surety, in clear teaching, and in exposing false teachers as dangerous to the children of God, but the Bible spells out exact how to do that, and more importantly the heart in which that should be done. (Check out this post for more on that).

Theological Surety and Bold Correction

‘Calling people out’ has never been easier with the internet being what it is. It has moved a long way from what was supposed to be a careful and loving process of church discipline. It was designed to be surrounded by gracious conversation in a sequential course of community sanctification.

I’m afraid that you’re not a plain-speaking, bold-truth-talking, patriarchal hero if you just cavalierly mash together theological clarity and bold correction – however testosterone saturated it makes you feel (#godcomplex). Iron cannot sharpen iron if one of you is carrying a machine gun!

We must learn to strive, brick-by-brick, mile-by-mile, word-by-word, and yes, doctrine-by-doctrine to learn more about who God is and how we can worship Him holistically and as a community. Worship of God should always be our motivating force.

What does your doctrine do?

That’s what proper doctrine is right? It’s not just a legislative road map, it’s a living and active set of tools to help us fall more in love with the living God. Sorry, did you think there was going to be an exam before you got to the pearly gates? Did you remember to bring your well-sharpened No2 pencil?

Does your doctrine call you to love and worship God more – or does it place you higher on your own throne?

Do your corrections of others come from a place of longing that God would get more heartfelt worship through people – or that you would be recognised as an authority?

Do you think that what God really needs is a ‘night watchman’, walking around with a flashlight and body-armour, making sure no pesky doctrinal discrepancies sneak through the cracks and into the Kingdom?

The church will keep sinking until we put down our swords and pull together.

 

Photo by Oleg Laptev on Unsplash

Blogging on the Sabbath – a call to digital rest.

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“If you can’t take a nap, if you can’t take a day off, heaven’s going to drive you nuts.” [Mark Driscoll]

I first heard the concept of an ‘electric sabbath’ from Rob Bell during his drops like stars tour. The idea was to have an entire digital shutdown one day a week: No phone, no internet, no email, no streaming.

For some of us, myself included, this feels like shutting down a significant portion of our lives. We are left weightless and wallowing, bumping into walls while we try to remember the basic human mechanics of being AFK (let the nerd understand).

Our digital worlds have become a significant space for intellectual, emotional and social stimuli, and as such we move around them with both personality and identity. We leave digital fingerprints.

These digital fingerprints are unique, because they have been cultivated daily – perhaps even hourly – as some form of organic representation of who we are in this parallel online word. However accurate that representation is, and however tangible we believe that world to be are disputable, but no less a reality. We have basically created an extra limb – one that pulls to us when we don’t use it.

As a blogger with a reasonable online presence, this pulls at me in the ‘waking world’ with quite some insistence.

The refresh button and revisiting the same social media walls becomes an almost unconscious activity. I’ve had whole days when I have neglected the needs of my spirit, family, and work, because my head had been firmly wired into an unguarded twitter comment.

So, I suggest a pact. Let’s give ourselves a digital sabbath. A day away from the crawling needs and desires of our digital realm. I suggest a fast, a time when we climb down from our fickle electric thrones and embrace the wholeness of the world without it.

The irony of this post is that I’m writing it on a Sunday morning. In 45 minutes, I’ll be preaching. Wouldn’t this time have been better spent by… praying, meditating, preparing, talking to my wife, eating breakfast (you fill in the gap).

Growing in closeness to God requires some care taken over spiritual disciplines like praying and Bible reading. For spiritual disciplines to work, however, they require both spirit and discipline. Neither of these can be nurtured entirely without any level of sacrifice or – put another way – fasting.

A fast is saying no to something that our body or our ego needs, in order to recognise the level of dependency that we have in God.

When you’re sat in the office and it’s nearing lunchtime and your stomach is rumbling with anticipation, but then you suddenly remember that you’re fasting, a lead weight drops. You feel a sense of loss and almost desperation. This empty longing is a growth metaphor for how we need to long for God. That’s why fasting exists. We use that feeling and turn it into prayers of dependence on and recognition of who God is – and who we would be without Him.

I have a small, A5 presentation folder that I use for preaching. I’ve had it since I was first at Bible College and saw everyone else using them. I stopped using it almost ten years ago in favour of iPads and my MacBook (the Holy Spirit comes when there’s Apple products on stage right?) Recently, however, I rediscovered my little preaching folder and started using it again.

One of the reasons I use it now is the little inscription on the front page that I put there while in College. It says:

“You have offended God infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince – and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.” [Jonathan Edwards, 1703 – 1757]

This is a heavy and somewhat brutal quote that says there is nothing apart from but God and His grace to uphold me  minute by minute. I am not my own, I was bought at a price, and it so important to me to reconnect with Him each day afresh. It’s important for me to recognise the depths from which He has saved me, and more the depths of need I have for Him each day.

That’s why we fast. That’s why we occasional withdraw.

The internet is noisy, and our digital fingerprints pull at us constantly. Perhaps a day off a week is not too much to ask to keep these things in check.

A digital sabbath. I think I might have a go!

 

Photo by Jens Kreuter on Unsplash

 

The best arguments against reading Harry Potter, with some critical responses – a faux debate.

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During my first degree over a decade ago, I wrote a paper for a Youth Ministry module basically discussing whether or not a Christian should read Harry Potter. It didn’t score massively highly (mostly due to my poor proofreading skills!), but it was still an eye-opening experience. I believed then that the debate was mostly settled by the plethora of literature released at the time; however, the question of the holiness of a believer who chooses to read Harry Potter, along with the soundness of their faith is still a solid part of modern Christian dialogue.

The ‘HP debate’ has followed my ministry ever since that first paper. Sometimes a young person has raised the question, and other times it has been a parent. Recently someone threatened to pull support from my ministry because they had heard (wrongly) that I had run a Harry Potter-themed event.

Although usually I deflect answering the question towards more Gospel-related themes, I’m going to go all in here as a once only treat. Enjoy.

At the extremes, one side of the debate sees the Harry Potter series as a black-and-white glorification of witchcraft, written deliberately to ensnare vulnerable young people into evil habits, thus demonically drawing them away from God; whereas the other far side sees it as harmless fun, without any ramifications for personal faith or holiness at any level at all. There is, however, a whole world of carefully considered nuance within these extremes, littered with intelligent thinkers across the spectrum. A little dialogue goes a long way after all, and reason should be given its day.

Setting the scene

There are some genuinely important questions to ask yourself as a Christian when engaging with any kind of popular media, so I don’t want to be black-and-white about this. I, for instance, personally have decided not to watch anything with nudity or sex scenes in it. I know that such scenes are simply not healthy for me in my personal faith journey, and I also know these scenes don’t serve my relationship with my wife. This means that I have never seen an episode of Game of Thrones for instance. That’s my choice informed by the current shape of my journey. I do, however, read Harry Potter, and have done so for many years.

So, rather than writing yet another ‘here’s why it’s all OK’ article, I wanted to engage with the question with a little bit more critical thinking. I strongly believe that to argue for anything, you should know at least some of the best arguments against your own position. Respecting different perspectives is essential for teachability, and teachability is essential for growth, and growth is essential for not being an ill-informed gasbag. An honourable goal that I’m trying to aspire to!

With that in mind, here are what I think are the best reasons – albeit briefly summarised – for not reading Harry Potter. I will follow this list with my responses to the reasons, and in doing so I hope to give a well-reasoned argument for. The hope here is to show that both sides have merit, and explain why I personally came down on my side. It’ll be your choice to decide at the end which you find more convincing, and more helpful for your own journey.

So, sleeves rolled up. Lumos spell cast (let the HP reader understand). Let’s do it!

The best reasons against reading Harry Potter.

Reason 1. (Content)

The Harry Potter world removes all distinctions between dark sorcery and light magic, rendering the reader passive (at best) towards the twisted nature of engaging with the pagan rites and occult rituals that are subversively written into the books. It explicitly nuances the spectrum, making out some witchcraft to be virtuous, when in fact, all witchcraft is evil. Put another way, it glorifies something that the Bible forbids (Deut. 18:10-12).

Reason 2. (Content)

Harry Potter passively promotes pagan and neopagan religions such as Wicca and dulls our critical senses which we would have otherwise used to steer clear of them. It effectively makes the gap smaller between our faith context and idolatrous faith contexts. Further, there are many deplorable instants in the midst of this, including the attempted murder of a baby, and reanimation of corpses. It’s simply too dark and too caviler with paganism.

Reason 3. (Author intent)

The research that went into writing Harry Potter included looking at real spells and spell-casters from historic pagan religions. The resulting Latin-derived phrases used in the books, piggy-backed on real spell craft language, some of which are quite unsettling. The unforgivable killing curse, ‘Avada Kedavra’ for instance, means ‘let the thing be destroyed’ in Aramaic. This can be interpreted as ‘may the thing lose its essence/soul.’

Reason 4. (Author intent)

There is no under-girding biblical worldview in Harry Potter that would make the magic presented fit in a healthy context, such as exists in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.

Reason 5. (Sanctification)

Harry Potter doesn’t add anything edifying to a faith journey of grace, and as such won’t be something we will engage with in eternity (i.e. we won’t read Harry Potter in Heaven, so why focus on it now?). There is nothing redeemable in it for the Christian to dwell on in a way that would make them grow (Phil. 4:8).

Reason 6. (Sanctification)

Any possible virtue found in Harry Potter is tainted by the overwhelming presence of forbidden actions (see Reason 1). Therefore, a Christian’s limited time on the Earth would be better spent reading something else more fulfilling – like the Bible.

My responses

Reason 1.

This will take the longest response and will form the basis for the others. So bear with me!

Response part a:

This dramatically misunderstands the biblical passages cited and is guilty of making light of the true nature of ‘forbidden sorcery’ as presented in the Bible. In doing so, this reason actually does exactly what it pushes against: it dulls and nuances our understanding and awareness of evil. Let’s look at the passages (focusing mainly on Deut. 18):

Deut. 18:10-12

Properly understood, what is listed here is ritual child sacrifice, being superstitious over the calendar, performing sleight-of-hand illusions (literally ‘juggling’), using rituals to predict the future (or pretending to, cf. Mic. 3:11), enchanting snakes, talking to the devil and trying to hurt people as a result, and talking to the dead.

Some of these things are about trying to communicate with the dead, to serpents (symbol for evil), to demons, or the devil. Obviously – don’t do that! Some of these things, however, are about the deception of people, usually done to make money. You probably shouldn’t do that either! Neither practice, however, is glorified or encouraged at any point in the Harry Potter books. There is a very clear line between good and evil in Harry Potter, and a broad exposition of good character.

There are two possible exceptions. First, ‘parseltongue’ (talking to snakes). However, the version of parseltongue in Harry Potter is about literal language; so talking to natural snakes, and not reaching out to evil as the snake symbolised in Deuteronomy. Second, using the ‘resurrection stone’ or ‘priori incantatem’ to see ghostly reflections of deceased people. Neither of these, however, are trying to harness the power of dead people to serve the living, neither are they used in ritual worship as would be the context of the passage (which we will now turn to).

You can’t talk about practices in isolation without understanding the wider plot. Interpreting omens, for instance, can be prophecy (Num. 22), Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac in fire by God’s command in Gen. 22, and of course God sacrificed His own Son! As in all things, therefore, the context is key:

This list comes from the rituals well-known among the nations (mostly Canaan/the Philistines) and they sat in a context of idolatrous worship. They represent common religious practices and were used by several historic religions. The ritual sacrifice in fire, for instance, came with Moloch worship (Lev. 20:2). In light of this, the overwhelming concern of Deut. 12-18 is the right worship of God, without allowing idolatrous worship of other ‘gods’ to creep in.

This is not a random cracking of the whip, or a black and white kick against anything that resembles our modern interpretation of words like ‘witchcraft’, but a wholehearted rejection of worshipping any god but the true God. Harry Potter and Deuteronomy are simply not talking about the same things. This is seen further in the other commonly cited ‘anti-sorcery’ passages below.

2 Chon. 33:6

Using the understanding gained above, we can know that the problem Judah’s King Manassah had was engaging in the idolatrous practices of false worship. He had blended (at best) and abandoned (at worse) the worship of the God of Israel with worshipping false gods. The restoration of Manassah was to know God (vv.11-13) and worship Him alone (vv.15-17).

Mal. 3:5

Sorcery here appears in a list of things condemned by the Law and practiced when one does not properly worship God. Again, the issue is being out of relationship with God, and as such adopting the practices of false religion. This comes down to ritualistic and superstitious communication with evil or the dead and is seated in a practice of false religion and idolatry.

Gal. 5:19-21

Paul gives us a list of actions that would flow out of someone who is not filled with the Spirit, contrasted against those that flow out of someone who is filled with the Spirit (vv.22-24). ‘Idolatry and witchcraft’ are a pairing – two sides of the same coin – as we saw in the Old Testament passages.

Rev. 18:23 (cf. 21:8; 22:15)

The guilty party here is the archetypical idolatrous nation of Babylon (probably Rome), which – among other things – tricks people out of worshipping God using a ‘magic spell’. This is linked with to the dishonest merchants, so might be making money from dark magic (as was widely practiced in Rome), however more likely simply means ‘deception’.

Summary

The fallacy of Reason 1. is to assume the modern versions of words like witchcraft mean the same thing in the scriptures – then to interpret those verses in isolation from the original context. This is poor practice and gives poor results.

These verses together paint a picture of the worship of false gods through ritualistic practices which can include talking to evil, the dead, or the devil. The practices themselves were not the problem; but were symptoms of false worship of false gods. This doesn’t condone the practices, however rather than looking at ‘magic’ in vacuum, we need to see the worldview and religion behind it.

It would be better to move away from the simplistic application, ‘don’t have anything to do with anything that looks remotely like magic’ (which would probably render a lot of my best object lessons inert!). Instead we should reach for the whole text and say ‘worship God fully and wholeheartedly in the ways He has instructed’, or even ‘don’t mix your worship of Him with how the world worships things that are not Him.’

Thinking more simply about it, is the issue in Harry Potter that things that look like spells, and omens, and predicting the future using rituals? Or is the issue that Harry Potter encourages us to wholeheartedly accept a false religion, rejecting true worship, while offering us ritualistic and blasphemous worship? I think it’s the former, which is simply not the problem the Bible is responding to.

Response part b.

The reading of something is not exactly the same as the practicing of something.

Even if we grant fully the premise that any possible kind of practice which resembles any kind of magic is a problem biblically, then are we also saying that reading about it is the very same as practicing it?

What is forbidden in the Bible is engaging in the ritualistic practice of false religion. If simply reading about this is the same as engaging with it, then there are a lot more books we should reject including some of our ‘Christian favourites’ such as the Chronicles of Narnia, or the Lord of the Rings.

I’ll admit there is a possibly slippery-slope argument here, but nuance is a powerful tool and is generally preferred (in my opinion) to a wholesale black-and-white rejection without discussion or accountability.

Reason 2

Response.

Much of my response to Reason 1 should answer this question. The worldview of Harry Potter does not condone ritualistic worship or false religion; that is not its point or its worldview, and you would have to read it very particularly to conjure that up (pun intended). Even when the author has borrowed from pagan rituals, they are at best a slightly random collection of heavily interpreted ideas, mashed together and deviated from significantly. Wicca practitioners themselves have rejected the themes of the book as based in their own practices. J. K. Rowling once tweeted:

‘To everyone asking whether their religion/belief/non-belief system is represented at Hogwarts: the only people I never imagined there are wiccans … it’s a different concept of magic to the one laid out in the books, so I don’t really see how they can co-exist.’

There are certainly some very dark moments in the series of books. I would strongly suggest reading Harry Potter with your children, rather than leaving them to it on their own, and having conversations about some of the scarier bits. I would also strongly suggest the same with C. S. Lewis’ work, and of course with J. R. R. Tolkien which I believe can be significantly darker. In fact, many of the texts used in high school today present troubling dark or sinful behaviour too – such as J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, or Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

As with all things when discipling or parenting children, we need to be careful, compassionate and consistent. There is no more darkness in Harry Potter than in many other books that we don’t outright reject the same way. Our job is to equip our children – so let’s be with them in it.

Reason 3

Response

Considering the research and motivation is important behind any work of literature. Establishing the views of the author and seeing where they subversively include them in the prose should be taken seriously. That said, the intent behind a thing is not always the same as the thing itself.

J. K. Rowling did research alchemy, religious history, wicca spell-craft, and many other areas we might find unsavoury. She looked a into herbal remedies of medieval history, into Shaman culture of African nations, and into the witch trials of various places. This was all part of her research. However, this research has been fully documented and explained in several places, including an exhibition at the British Library. It did not include the actual practice of such things.

I too have studied somewhat unsavoury culture in my research of the Old Testament. My wife, a fiction writer, often has to research various areas to create fuller character, scenes, and plots. The Inklings (most famously Lewis, Tolkien and C. Williams) researched and studied much of the exact same materials Rowling did when together, and they were primarily a Christian group. This research led to the invention of the Necromancer in Tolkien, for instance, and the witch Jadis in Lewis. In fact, Lewis was heavily influenced by liberal Christian George MacDonald, who had huge swaths of sorcery, mythology, and magic throughout his fantasy writings. Rowling herself was strongly influenced by the Inklings, and you can see echos of their work throughout her own. David Kopel in ‘Deconstructing Rowling’ gives several accounts of this, such as,

‘In the climax of Chamber of Secrets, Harry descends to a deep underworld, is confronted by two satanic minions (Voldemort and a giant serpent), is saved from certain death by his faith in Dumbledore (the bearded God the Father/Ancient of Days), rescues the virgin (Virginia Weasley), and ascends in triumph. It’s Pilgrim’s Progress for a new audience.’

The research of a topic does not equal the practice of what is researched. Assuming a subversive plot to encourage children into actual witchcraft is just not what is going on. Rowling herself quoted in a CNN interview:

‘I absolutely did not start writing these books to encourage any child into witchcraft. I’m laughing slightly because to me, the idea is absurd. I have met thousands of children and not even one time has a child come up to me and said, “Ms Rowling, I’m so glad I’ve read these books because now I want to be a witch.”’

Reason 4

Response

(Warning: Spoilers)

The meta-narrative of the Harry Potter books gives a clear division between good and evil. The evil side tries to rob virtue from all that is good, it tries to control the masses through deception and fear, and it tries to cheat death and ultimately find immortality. The good side, however, is driven by family, servant-hearted sacrifice, teamwork, friendship, and most importantly love.

Love in Harry Potter is presented as the most powerful force in the universe; that which evil underestimates and frankly does not at all understand. Harry Potter is in many ways a modern commentary on the philosophy of love. This love was ultimately shown in self-sacrifice. First, Harry’s mum sacrifices herself for the sake of her son, and then eventually, Harry sacrifices himself for the good of the whole world. His sacrifice is interesting; not only is it very clearly motivated by selfless love for others, but it also ends in resurrection.

The resurrection of Harry provides a powerful protection of love (the same his mother gave to him) over all he had died for. As a result, the evil antagonist can no longer hurt people and is then easily defeated.

This is, quite simply, the clearest fictional presentation of the Gospel in metaphoric form that I have ever seen.

Added to this are a huge array of moral dilemmas resolved healthily with virtue winning out. There is no underage sex, nor are there unhealthy relationships with narcotics or alcohol. Even lying is shown to have serious consequences. It is, in sum, a virtuous exploration of adolescent development, full of emotionally developing relationships and healthily resolved conflicts. Finally, there is a wide range of issues explored that are common to the teenage experience. These include losing parents, death, separation, mental health, bad dreams, exam pressure and the like. Harry Potter actually contains a rich tapestry of discussion topics, almost all of which would be resolved in ways fully compatible with the biblical narrative.

J. K. Rowling calls herself a practicing Christian, and attends church. The explicit amount of Christian theology throughout the book is evidence of a real knowledge of the Gospel. In an interview response to the question, ‘are you a Christian?’ Rowling said,

‘Yes, I am, which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God. Every time I’ve been asked if I believe in God, I’ve said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what’s coming in the books.’

Considering the strong Christian themes, the Christian moralistic worldview, and the response Rowling gives of her own faith – we would have to assume that the simple presence of witchcraft alone in the Harry Potter series is enough to reject her worldview as unbiblical. Using that same measure though, we would also have to reject many other fabulous books that also claim an explicit Christian basis.

Reasons 5 and 6

I believe these are responded to above, but on a more personal note, I have found much in the Harry Potter series that has encouraged, edified, and supported my faith. The artistic celebration of self-sacrificing love over evil, the power of resurrection, and the need for a humble saviour demonstrated in the books have often caused me to turn in worship.

I have also found many of the relationships and themes of the book to be useful in my ministry as examples and talking points, and as such have been invaluable as a missionary tool among young people.

In conclusion

Each and every Christian needs to realistically decide for themselves whether or not reading, watching, or listening to any kind of popular media will serve or hinder their relationship with God. I believe Harry Potter falls into this category.

Here’s a few summary points:

  • I am not convinced that the mere presence of magic in Harry Potter is enough to condemn it scripturally.
  • I am not convinced that a lack of distinction between good and evil, or light and dark magic exists in the series.
  • I am not convinced that the assumed ‘glorification’ of some magic as good, encourages people into the sorcery that is explicitly condemned by the Bible; or even that they are even talking about the same thing.
  • I am not convinced that the research inherent in writing good fantasy fiction is the same as practicing the things researched.
  • I am, however, convinced that Harry Potter should be read carefully.
  • I am convinced that some of the darkness in Harry Potter is sometimes taken too far.
  • I am convinced that for some (especially younger children) it should not be read alone.
  • I am convinced of the clear presentation of the Gospel metaphor throughout the wider story, and the constant reminder of the power of love, courage, and friendship.

 

Photo by Larm Rmah on Unsplash

Do we over-normalise our faith?

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At the end of 2016, Youth For Christ released a piece of research called ‘Gen Z: Rethinking Culture’. One of the stand out quotes from that immense work was an answer to the question, “What is your experience of Christians”. It went like this:

“They are normal like everyone else. Their faith doesn’t change them.”

Boom! This should strike hard and resonate deep. This answer – which recurred in various forms throughout the research – says that those young people who knew Christians did not see anything distinctively Christian about them. No light, no fire, no new heart, no challenge to injustice, nothing to display the radical Jesus to a desperate and needy world. The word was ‘normal.’ Ouch.

The battle for normalisation

Over the last three decades, we’ve made normalisation the battle cry of youth mission in the Church. We’ve said that Christians are coming across too weird, and too removed from the world, and the Ned Flanders stereotype needed to undergo some dramatic surgery.

There was certainly a lot of truth in this – after all, if Jesus doesn’t work in real life for real people, then He’s just not real. Dressing up our faith in legalism or overt, unnecessary quirkiness has never been helpful. A level of normalisation has been needed. However, have we gone too far?

Youth mission resources have put an inordinate amount of energy into encouraging us to show just how normal we are to young people. How we dress, what boxsets we devour, and which words we absorb into our natural vocab. We’ve moved away from questions like ‘what does Jesus expect from your life?’ to ‘is it ok for a Christian to have tattoos?’

Now were two or three generations down the line, and our church-raised teenagers are living the Christian life that we’ve recalibrated into normality for them, I wonder if we’ve gone too far. Now their mates don’t see the radical. The normalisation process looks like it may have been too successful.

Sometimes a little weird goes a long way

We know the dangers of watering down the gospel, but the normalisation of the Gospel-carriers can be just as insidious.

Don’t get me wrong. There is certainly an level of normalisation that we’ve needed to acquire. We are people of grace, not works, and Jesus came into the world to save the world, not create a weird bubble of odd, judgemental people. And for the record… I have a beard, a tattoo, and a red flannel shirt!

However, sometimes a little weird goes a very long way. As Christians there is something inherently different and radical about us – and that is supposed to show in way that can’t be normalised without being diluted.

Jesus said in this world you will have trouble (Jn. 16:33), He tells us to let our light shine high on a stand for the world to see (Mt. 5:14-16), We are in the world, but not of it (Jn. 15:19; 17:14-16). We are citizens of heaven; travellers, and just passing through this world (Eph. 2:19; Phil. 3:20). Citizens should look like where they come from right?

We should bear the traits of our citizenship

My wife is American, living in the UK. She has recently applied for naturalised British citizenship (so please pray for her!). She will be part of the UK; able to move freely, work, vote, and be afforded the rights of all British Citizens. However, she is also naturally American. That is where she is from, what she is of. She will be in Britain, but that doesn’t mean she will suddenly loose her accent or forget the words to her National Anthem. Her character and formation are still very much the Californian girl I married. I want her to live with me in the UK, but I don’t want to ‘normalise’ the American out of her.

We are in the world but not of it. We’re not from the world – we’re not products of the world – we’re of Jesus. He gave us second birth. We are born again in Him. This makes us citizens of His Kingdom. Let’s try and look a like it.

We are a little weird…

Some of the things my American wife does (like leaving the teabag in the cup) look weird in the UK. She sounds different and dresses different. She still lives here respectfully, loves people, makes friends, works, pays tax, but that doesn’t make her less who she is. We too are called to live the traits that Jesus called us to – to look like Him and bear the image of His kingdom.

We’re not meant to look like legalistic, judgemental, controversy junkies – but we are called to be a shining like in a grumpy dark place. That will be a little weird.

We’re not meant to be socks-n-sandals, bowl-cut, technophobes – but we are called to carry the name of Jesus like food to a hungry world. That will be a little weird.

We’re not meant to see the world as enemies and heathen – but we are called to love, serve, grow, proclaim, and point to Jesus. That will be a little weird.

We really need to stop telling our kids that following Jesus isn’t weird, and that it doesn’t mean a change in their lifestyle or choices. Following Jesus is a radical thing – and that will be a little weird.

The best kind of weird!

 

Photo by Artem Bali on Unsplash